from the trust-us-we're-the-cable-company dept

While debate over the Comcast merger had hit a bit of a lull for Thanksgiving, it was revived this week with the launch of a group calling itself the Stop Mega Comcast Coalition. Formed by a combination of companies like Dish and consumer advocacy groups like Public Knowledge, the group is lobbying to stop the merger on the grounds it harms competition, price and innovation across a number of markets, including broadband, television, and advertising. Of course, group participants Fairpoint Communications and Dish would likely give a limb to wield the kind of market power Comcast enjoys, but you're apparently supposed to ignore that and just applaud their selfless dedication to consumer welfare.

The unveiling of the group resulted in Comcast penning a blog post in which it slammed the new group for trotting out complaints that "weren't found to be credible" in the company's past transaction reviews (like when Comcast acquired NBC, then ignored the merger conditions crafted by itself). To hear Comcast tell it, the company found at least 600 "thoughtful and positive" people who think Comcast getting immensely more massive is a great idea:

"While it’s no surprise that the same competitors and special interest groups who’ve gone after Comcast in the past are at it again, the record tells a very different story. Over the last several months, the FCC has received an outpouring of nearly 600 thoughtful and positive comments about the transaction from a wide range of supporters. Unlike most of the criticism, the support has been very transaction-specific.

This support includes more than 100 Chambers of Commerce and business organizations, as well as a wide array of small businesses, start-ups, and technology companies. It includes more than 20 programmers, nearly 200 diversity groups and community partners, and over 150 state and local leaders of both parties."

"We are still working with a vendor to analyze the FCC spreadsheet but in case it shows that there are any consumers in census blocks that may lose a broadband choice, want to make sure these sentences are more nuanced."

That's essentially Comcast accidentally publicly admitting that, even after a year of merger prep and defense, that it doesn't actually fully understand the impact of its own deal proposal. The note suggests Comcast had to pay an outside vendor to double check FCC data (provided to the FCC by Comcast), and then would have softened its rhetoric depending on what the analysis found. In a follow up e-mail to me, Comcast denies that it doesn't understand its own $45 billion mega-merger, but then adds to truly do so would take actually visiting some neighborhoods:

"Karl, our filings have detailed this issue in the past. It would literally take someone walking the streets or going down to a house by house map to find out if there is any actual overlap - and this would be if any likely in only a very very small number of homes."

Perhaps you should maybe go do that before repeatedly insisting there's no competitive overlap? Sure, it's true that the merger is more about vertical integration, programming leverage and monopsony concerns than direct market competition, but that doesn't make Comcast's stumbling, bumbling defense of the deal any less entertaining.

from the okay-then dept

Ubisoft and DRM go back a long, long way. In nearly every case, it hasn't exactly gone well for the game company, either. Its uPlay launcher, for instance, sort of stripped all the DRM out of publisher's games, which didn't make them too happy. Then there was the time its DRM allowed for the remote hacking of its customer's computers. Yay. Yet, even these experiences never really deterred Ubisoft from trying to beat the pirates at their own game with different, but always annoying DRM strategies. My favorite, frankly, is still the vuvuzela DRM.

I have no idea how far this latest strategy of Ubisoft's will go or what it plans to do with their honeypot trap, but the company sure has done a nice job getting Far Cry 4 pirates to out themselves.

If your copy of Far Cry 4 on PC doesn't have FOV (Field Of View) options, and you complained about this on a forum, you might want to go and delete your comments. Because there's a very good chance you've just outed yourself as someone who pirated the game. Seems the option to adjust the FOV was added as part of an update that came along with the retail release of the game, so anyone who doesn't have it is most likely (a small handful of folks might have bought a disc version and never gone online, but then, how would you be complaining online?) in possession of a pirated copy.

Which, I mean, meh. In and of itself, getting those who pirated the game to unwittingly out themselves is kind of funny, kind of clever, and certainly isn't of any harm. If used in conjunction with a human approach and a little social shaming, it could actually be quite productive. Ubisoft's reputation would have to be overcome, but, hey, this is the land of second chances or whatever. If this is part of some plan for Ubisoft to bring out a legal hammer however, well, that ain't going to work as a matter of a long term business plan.

Which is what makes this seem simultaneously exhausting and futile. This arms race with pirates at best will never end and more likely will always be lost eventually, so what's the point?

from the oops,-did-i-say-that? dept

Paul Duffy, as many of you know, is one of the key players in the Prenda/Anti-Piracy Law Group game. In fact, he's "officially" the only named partner of Prenda -- though others have argued that it's really John Steele and Paul Hansmeier pulling Duffy's strings. Either way, Duffy might want to have a talk with his wife. As some folks noticed, late on Monday, his wife, Shari Duffy made a post on Facebook (since deleted) about her husband's activities, in which she lashes out at those who have pointed out that he's engaged in what various courts have now called a "fraud on the court" by calling them "the worst kinds of thieves imaginable." But, the key thing is the final line of her comment:

If you can't read the full text, here it is:

Here's a fun fact...my husband sues people for pirating porn and the phone companies for putting it in the hands of people under 18...the men caught really hate his firm and have tried to harm him physically and financially, but they are the worst kind of thieves imaginable and shame on all the mobile carriers for allowing people to move X rated material to the hands of minors. Someone we know paid an undisclosed amount to settle a case so that we would not release his name to the public.

It's worth pointing out that the folks involved in various trolling efforts have generally bent over backwards to avoid saying that they're getting people to pay them to avoid being named, because, you know, that's illegal. As former federal prosecutor, Ken "Popehat" White notes, this "sounds like a confession of interstate extortion to me." And remember that Judge Wright, in the Southern District of California, has already claimed that Duffy's actions (along with Steele and Hansmeier) should be investigated by the US Attorneys for racketeering -- and extortion is generally a key part of many racketeering schemes.

I'm no expert on extortion law, so for those who are, please weigh in, but it seems like 18 USC 875(d) might be particularly relevant here:

Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Admitting that the person paid up to avoid being named, and not because of any merit in the accusations seems to be a pretty clear admission to violating that law. We've heard of stupid criminals getting rung up for their own social networking posts, but how about their wives "bragging" about their actions and admitting to federal crimes in the process?

And, of course, not that it needs to be said, but while perhaps some of the people speaking out against Duffy and his firm were caught in his scheme to get people to pay up, many of us have never been involved or accused of infringement, and are speaking out because we think his actions are an abuse of the legal system to shake people down for money -- pretty much exactly as Shari perhaps inadvertently admitted.